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curiosity!

Riyaah

A friend of mine recently brought her new
son – born seven weeks early, and fresh from the NICU –
home amidst much joy and celebration. The celebration was
short-lived when she had to return to the hospital a few days later
because of blood in his stool. After a few tests, they determined
the cause: a dairy allergy.

Newborn food allergies are surprisingly common, though many people
don’t know about them. Babies subsist wholly on breastmilk or
formula, of course, but we all know how much can be passed through
breastmilk to a baby, and foods that may cause allergies are no
exception. Something like ninety percent of newborn
“colic” is caused by a food allergy, usually a reaction
to dairy or soy.

As I mentioned earlier, I weaned Cora (sort of accidentally) over
the weekend, and there I was agonizing over my tender boobs and
getting all teary-eyed at that fact that my baby no longer needed
me. And then I realized –

When I first began looking at motherhood
and making decisions, I knew I wanted to breastfeed. I decided
I’d nurse for a year, and then begin weaning naturally. By a
year, nursings had tapered off to snuggle times like early morning
or naps or bedtime, and both girls were getting most of their
nutrition from food.

With Maddie, I went easy on the weaning. I had a nebulous goal of
18 months, but didn’t want to force the issue since I
didn’t have to. At 15 months, I forced the nap weaning
because we had a big trip coming up, but otherwise let everything
end naturally. Right around the same time Maddie dropped her
morning nursing, and we were down to once a day by the time I was
pregnant with Cora.

Since I’ve now nursed almost three
continuous years, stopping for a few brief glorious months while I
was pregnant with Cora and Maddie was weaned, I’ve got the
nursing thing down – no fumbling hands, no tired arms,
nothing. I can get into position in seconds – I’m
telling you, I’m a machine. I’ve got it down to a
science.

And let me say before I go any further that Cora is, for all
intents and purposes, weaned: she’s only nursing a couple
times a day, all snuggle or sleep-related. She’s got the
early morning nursing, which usually (hopefully) gets her back to
sleep for another precious hour; she has a nursing at nap time; and
finally a nursing for bedtime. I settle in the chair, draw the
boppy around my waist, nestle Cora on my lap, and pick up my
library book. My routine’s a well-worn groove, and apparently
I’m not the only one who’s got it down cold.

It seems Cora’s on to me, and knows exactly what I do while
nursing, because she’s been a bit clingy and needy the past
few weeks and wanting to nurse for comfort. How do I know this, you
might ask?

Cora’s 14 months now, and as
misfortune of all kids with older siblings, I keep comparing her to
where Maddie was at the same age. There a deeper blog about that
somewhere out there, but today I’m thinking of one milestone
in particular – nursing.

On some levels Maddie and Cora at 14 months are much the same;
they’d both been pretty much weaned from nursing for meals by
12 months old, and it’s clear that from then on out the
nursing’s been all about routine and comfort. Somewhere
between 9 and 12 months nursing went from a mealtime thing to a
snacking/sleeping/comfort thing, with actual meals and snacks
creeping into those nursing slots. By the time we hit a year with
Maddie, she was down to four times a day – early morning,
when she’d go back to sleep for a couple more hours; nursing
when she woke up; nursing for naptime; and nursing for bedtime. On
paper, Cora’s been very similar, but in practice it’s a
bit more difficult to pin down.